


gone

by simplyclockwork



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cancer, Death and Dying, Johnlock - Freeform, Loss, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sad, Those Left Behind, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24917830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyclockwork/pseuds/simplyclockwork
Summary: gone/ɡôn/verbpast participle of go.adjectiveno longer present; departed."the bad old days are gone"
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 13
Kudos: 45





	gone

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note and Disclaimer:** This drabble mentions cancer, loss, and suffering. 
> 
>   
> This is a sad little bit of writing. I wrote this when my best friend's dad passed away several weeks ago, and I didn't know what to do with my grief. Her family has always been a second family to me, and his loss has left such a gap. Writing this helped me process some of the grief I was feeling. I wasn't sure if I would post this, but I have ultimately decided to do so. 
> 
> For those who are dedicated to always reading my new works, please do not feel any pressure to do so if this story might be too much. It is, as I said, not a happy piece of writing.

Losing a loved one is abstract. A sort of gaping, bleeding, empty space left behind by someone who once breathed life and love and warmth into the atmospheric galaxy of your shared experiences. It’s been six months since John faded from the world, and Sherlock feels his absence like a missing limb. To his dismay, the cliché holds up, as advertised.

The Union Jack pillow stares at him from John’s empty chair, the worn shape of his body pressed into faded, red-dyed fibres. If he were to trace his fingers over the threadbare armrest, there would be no lingering warmth from John’s skin, except for in his own head.

It’s silent in there. An echo of the quiet of 221B. Mrs. Hudson moved to warmer climates four years ago, leaving the flat to them.

Sherlock remembers how she cried when they told her about John’s diagnosis. About the cancer that had sunk into and weakened his bones, insidious, silent, creeping into their lives in the times before things began to crumble.

Pressing his fingers to the cold windowpane, he wonders when it began. Was it there when John first kissed him with trembling hands and dry lips and snow in his hair, the two of them caught up in one another on the staircase? Had it lingered like some invisible, unseen spectre when John fell to his knee, ring box in hand? Slept between them after sex, their bodies slick with cooling sweat, John brushing damp hair from Sherlock’s forehead?

It’s impossible to know. Pointless to wonder. But he does. Like clockwork, ceaseless and cyclical, Sherlock does.

Two years of pain. Of empty hope, almost-possibilities shot down by the crack of John’s body when his ankle gave out, marrow eaten through with tumour. Sherlock remembers holding him like glass. Frail life cradled in his hands, the once-unstoppable force of John Watson reduced to agony personified.

He had been a soldier to the end, right to the final breath as it passed from his lips. The ease of that final exhale had felt like a joke, warm and shallow against Sherlock’s cheek, John’s hands held loose in his palms.

Never had anyone seemed so small and so infinitely colossal in one simultaneous moment. John had been, was always, immeasurably limitless, the weight of his person failing to be diminished by something as mundane as death.

Sometimes, Sherlock sits on the old, dusty bed in the upstairs bedroom. It’s no longer John’s room, hasn’t been for years, well before the cancer kept him home, before it led Sherlock to quit cases in favour of looking after John. They had both said in spoken words that it was for John’s care. They had both known it was so Sherlock could be there. So he wouldn’t miss one moment. One breath. A single facial expression or held-back pain tear.

Looking at his hands, settled in his lap, Sherlock doesn't remember when he left the window. His fingers curl and he realizes that he’s cold.


End file.
